About the Office of Early Childhood Development
The Office of Early Childhood Development (ECD) oversees early care and education programs in the Administration of Children and Families (ACF). ECD provides leadership to support a national agenda focused on young children, their families, and the early care and education workforce. During young children’s formative years, the early childhood programs are focused on ensuring all children and families have access to comprehensive, high-quality programs, and services. Read more about ECD’s current initiatives and find more information here on the leaders leading us forward in this work.
Program offices within ECD include the Office of Child Care (OCC), the Office of Head Start (OHS), Tribal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (TMIECHV), and Preschool Development Grants Birth through Five (PDG B-5).
Mission
ECD Mission
Promoting an early childhood sector that meets the needs of children and their families in communities across the country.
ECD Vision
It is our responsibility to create opportunities for children and their families and the early childhood workforce so that —
Children and Families have safe and supportive experiences that promote child development across multiple domains, including physical, cognitive and social-emotional; and opportunities that meet families’ unique needs logistically, linguistically, culturally, and financially; and The Early Childhood Workforce has a system that attracts, prepares, supports, and retains a highly qualified, diverse workforce; and compensation, including benefits, that demonstrates the value of the workforce to our communities.
Our Commitment to this Vision
ACF will work in partnership with our federal partners, states, territories, tribes, other grantee partners and communities across the country to ensure our policies and funding opportunities are coordinated, and responsive to community needs:
Coordinated and flexible so that federal funding administered by different agencies and program offices can work together at the state, territory, tribe and local level toward shared outcomes and easier access to services for families and communities; and
Responsive to needs that we hear directly from families and early childhood workers within specific cultural and community contexts.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Equity Action Statements
The Office of Early Childhood Development (ECD) is committed to assuring equitable access to high-quality early childhood programs that support children and families and meet their diverse needs. We are pleased to report highlights of how we are advancing equity within our work.
1. Implement a racial equity tool to identify the extent to which programs, policies, practices, operations, and initiatives promote equity, and address existing inequities by February 2023.
Developed, implemented, and evaluated an Early Childhood Equity Analysis (ECEA) tool to expand upon a racial equity assessment by including other factors like disabilities, gender, place, and language. The operationalization of ECEA was piloted in six projects from ECD, the Office of Child Care, and the Office of Head Start to shape equity practice and impacts.
2. Expand opportunities for directly impacted parents and early childhood service providers to provide input on policies and practices at the federal and state level by November 2022.
Developed a system for parents and early childhood service providers to have sustainable opportunities to -participate in focus groups to gather information on early childhood programs from the user perspective.
3. Engage Tribal leaders and stakeholders to further nation-to-nation collaboration that promotes access to consistent, high-quality and culturally relevant early childhood programs by February 2023.
Continued to work closely with eight (8) tribes as part of a new Tribal Early Learning Initiative (TELI) Collaborative to provide intensive technical assistance on their projects.
4. Plan to solicit applications for an early childhood workforce center to equitably promote higher compensation and career pathways for early childhood educators by December 2022.
Launched a new National Early Care and Education Workforce Center, funded at $30 million over five years, to support research and technical assistance to equitably improve recruitment and retention through higher compensation, strengthened career advancement systems, and workplace policies.
5. Provide equitable access to career opportunities in the Office of Early Childhood Development and foster an office culture that supports a workforce that reflects the diversity of the country’s children and families by December 2022.
In Progress as of September 2023 — Provided more equitable access to federal government career by hosting Equity Fellows program this Summer, in collaboration with Arizona State University and The Children’s Equity Project.